My Early Years

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Added: Sun Dec 2nd 3:54pm
Posted in: Lifelong Learning

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At the urging of my eldest daughter, I will try to write something that makes sense. Born in Long Beach, Calif., my parents, Al & Emma Pallas, moved to Catalina Island, Ca. in 1930. I was five at the time. It was at the tail end of the depression and life for my parents was rather tough, but we survived those days when my father got a job with the Santa Catalina Island Co.. William Wrigley owned Catalina Island and the Chicago Cubs trained there. That was a plus for all of us that liked sports. My father, being an ex minor league player, new a lot of the people in the Cubs organization. That gave me the urge to play baseball, it also helped our high school team, because some of the all time greats would help us to learn the art. A couple of those players are now in the Hall Of Fame, such as Gabby Hartnett. Every summer the Island was a play ground for the rich and famous, to name a few, Jean Harlow, Mickey Rooney, Errol Flynn, and three of the old time big bands. Some of those were, Glenn Miller, Ted Weems, Artie Shaw and many others. I guess that nobody now days would ever know of them. They played at the Casino, which was built by Wrigley. It was in those days, the largest round Ball Room in the world, and down stairs was a movie theatre. Life was great, just swim trunks and no shoes in the day time(this was from the age of 10 to 17), just diving for coins when the two steam ships came in with tourists. No goggles either. What a great life. Pretty girl tourists and $1.00 to spend on them. More to come later, my life did not end there(thank goodness).